Strategic inpatriate acculturation: a stress perspective

We argue that current acculturation research offers an incomplete picture of the psycho- logical processes as they occur on the longer-term assignments of inpatriate international assignments. These assignments refer to the strategic transference of personnel to the par- ent company headquarters for significant periods of time. We argue that the inpatriate’s commitment to a global career combined with a prolonged investment of time at headquar- ters evokes acculturative stresses different to those experienced by other types of global staffing methods. The contribution of this manuscript is two-fold, in that we (1) describe the inpatriate acculturation experience and (2) analyze the impact inpatriate assignment characteristics have on inpatriate acculturation stress. Propositions on the development of inpatriate acculturation strategy and mitigation of acculturative stresses are offered.